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Everything in a name
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The most popular name in Bangalore, at least, according to the phone directory, is a really short one that stretches over 14 pages: Ramesh.
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MR. ANAND HULIGAL used to wonder why strange voices on the phone kept calling him "Rock". He has solved the mystery, thanks to me. I called him up because, well, I've been studying the telephone directory (for reasons I shall soon reveal), and his was the very first name in it. Why wasn't he tucked away somewhere in `H' under Huligal, Anand? Because he had metamorphosed into a dashing A.E. Rroc A. Huligal. That's a hell of a name to start a phone book with.
So many of us have never looked up our own names in the "residential listings" to check whether the telecom people have got their spellings right. Mr. Huligal was one such trusting soul. That's probably because he is himself a telecom employee. He used to be Assistant Engineer (AE) of the now defunct unit of his department known as the Regional Repair and Overhauling Centre (RROC) - ah, now we begin to see the light.
Of late, I've been scanning the directory for unusual names - the result of a phone call I received one morning. A young man's voice asked in a polite, lucid tone: "Can I speak to Rumpa?" I'd heard of Jhumpa care of Pulitzer, but Rumpa was a new one on me. When I looked up the phone book, the closest I got to it was Rumgta. Hmm. Is it only me, or do you find "Rumgta" a bit Wodehouse-ian? We've got to be careful here, for our own names might sound peculiar to many other Indians, but I'm speaking now as a fairly parochial "Southie" who falters every time she pronounces a simple name from "up north" - and I'm not even talking of an Assamese surname like Chhakchhuak.
I am taken aback when I meet a woman called Santosh or a man called Ashwini.
By the way, people in northern parts usually assume that I'm a "Mr". Members of the Meena caste were apparently among those who were categorised as dacoit tribes by our colonisers.
After my "Rumpa" experience, I spent long hours with my nose buried in both volumes of the local directory and was dazzled by the medley of names that the good folk of Bengaluru bear. You name it and it's there. Besides the predictable "Southie" monikers, which reveal the state of origin (Menon, Srinivasulu, Ilangovan) and sometimes even the region (Hegde, Kattishettar), I encountered a whole host of Goan, Marathi, Bengali, Gujarati, and Punjabi names. There were Parsi, Sikh and Jewish names, Chinese, French, and German names. Balwinder, Banerji, and Bholaram are affable neighbours, at least in the phone book.
Talking of congeniality, have you noticed how the top of every page in the directory carries the first surname on the page linked by a hyphen with the last surname on the page? Dramatically juxtaposed are Anwar-Appaji, Alex-Ali, Gopinath-Gordon, and Amanulla-Amardeep. How hard would we have to look, in future, to find an actual Indu-Iqbal, Nasreen-Nataraj, Ambika-Ameer or Hemavathi-Hereford? Nazeeruddin-Neelakanta, Ayaz-Ayyappan, and Usman-Uttamchand are yoked together merely on paper, but you keep hoping they'll materialise in the flesh.
I know whom else I want to meet in the flesh: Rose Joes - or is it Jose? She probably speaks in rhymes. Scholastica must surely wear thick glasses and a studious air. But I know that the mental pictures I create of phone-owners with interesting names might not match the originals. For instance, Abymoan and Joemoan might sound like a couple of old geezers with the gout, but the mournful air about them is merely the result of trying to be phonetically faithful to the Malayalam word for "little boy". Elsewhere in the directory you see a variation: Joemon, and Sebymon. And let's not overlook Silu Mol, who is a woman and not a little girl with pigtails.
That's a problem faced by some Keralans - they're stuck with their childhood pet names, year after embarrassing year. A 90-year-old called Baby sounds rather ludicrous, you'll agree.
Some entries in the phone book make you wonder whether they're printer's devils, but then you realise that the bearers of those names have spelt them the way they pronounce them. Thus, Benedict becomes Bendit, Bendict, Benadic or Benadie. Every Brian becomes a "Brain".
At the other end of the spectrum are those who have deliberately given their names a fashionable twist - Ruckmani for Rukmini, Row for Rao, and, heavens alive, Secunder for Sikander! I found out that Wacziarg was not a spelling error but a Frenchman. I do know an Etienne in Bangalore who isn't French; neither was an Honore I used to know, who was named after the writer Balzac.
When it comes to naming their children after historical figures, none can beat the people of Tamil Nadu and Kerala. Lenins and Stalins abound, and some of them have found their way into the local phone book. A friend who teaches in a college here tells me he has had students named Gary Cooper, Paul Newman, and Sylvester Stallone, but the absolute winner was - brace yourself - Jesus Milton Rousseau.
The most popular name in Bangalore - at least, according to the phone directory - is a really short one that stretches over 14 pages: Ramesh. The eye glazes over when confronted with columns and columns of this name attached to various initials. It's much more fun to try and spot interesting names. Some of them beg a response if you imagine a question mark after them.
Fancy Devi? Sorry, my tastes don't run to women.
Rub Nawaz? I think I'll decline that invitation.
C.K. MEENA
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